First author, corresponding author and co-authors on a PhD paper

Who should be first author on a PhD paper?

You should be. When the paper comes from your thesis work, and you collected the data, ran the analysis and wrote the draft, the first-author slot is yours in almost every field that orders authors by contribution.

Universities that count papers for the thesis mostly assume the same. Anna University, for example, wants the scholar as first author, or as second author when the supervisor is first. These rules are different from place to place. Read our guide on the publication requirement for a PhD, and then your own ordinance, before the order is fixed.

Some cases are not so clear.

• Two scholars on one dataset. Suppose a lab-mate did as much work as you. Discuss about it now itself. One of you can lead this paper and the other can lead the next one, or you can use an equal-contribution note.
• Fields that list authors alphabetically, such as much of mathematics. Get a note from your supervisor explaining this convention, and keep it ready for research cell.

On author order the UGC PhD Regulations, 2022 are silent. What they do ask for is a “Research and Publication Ethics” course inside the 12 coursework credits (clause 9(1)).

Who counts as an author? The ICMJE criteria and CRediT roles

Most journals take their definition of authorship from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), including many outside medicine. As per ICMJE, an author has to meet all four of the following.

1. Made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to acquiring, analysing or interpreting the data.
2. Drafted the work, or revised it critically for important intellectual content.
3. Gave final approval to the version that will be published.
4. Agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

The person must meet all four, and meeting one alone is not enough. Someone who designed the study but never saw the manuscript has missed criteria 2 and 3. ICMJE also says that anyone meeting the first criterion should be given the chance to help draft and approve the paper, so that nobody is kept out on a technicality. Getting funding, general supervision of a research group and language editing do not earn authorship on their own.

The 14 CRediT roles

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) records what each person did on the paper. It was made an ANSI/NISO standard in 2022. Elsevier journals and some other publishers are asking for a CRediT statement at submission time. The 14 roles are given below in the official spelling.

Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.

Who qualifies as an author is not decided by CRediT. The statement is only a record of who did which work on the paper. Elsevier’s CRediT page says clearly that the statement “in no way changes the journal’s criteria to qualify for authorship”.

Where does the supervisor go in the author list?

In many lab-based groups in science and engineering, the supervisor’s name goes last. People take that last slot to mean “the person who led the project”. Many social science and management departments put the supervisor second, right after the scholar. Both are only conventions. ICMJE does not write either one into its rules, and it says the author group decides the order, not the editors.

I would just copy the order in recent papers from your department, unless the counting rule of your university forces something different. Suppose your guide wants to be first on a paper that is clearly from your chapter. Raise it early, and keep the ordinance open on the table when you talk.

A co-supervisor or a DC member who gave real input on the method can be an author. A HOD whose only part was signing the forwarding letter cannot be one.

What does the corresponding author do, and should it be you?

As per ICMJE, the corresponding author is the one person whose main job is communicating with the journal through submission, peer review and publication. Authorship details, ethics approval, disclosures, all this paperwork has to be complete, and that checking is on this person. After publication also, he or she has to stay available to answer critiques and requests for data.

Publishers add duties of their own. Springer Nature asks the corresponding author to confirm two points. One, that they can act for all co-authors. Two, that everyone has agreed to the author list and the contribution statements. Nature Portfolio journals hold them answerable for the proofs, including names and affiliations, and want their ORCID iD. Elsevier wants them to make sure no inappropriate co-authors are on the paper.

For a scholar, taking this role has some benefit. All the journal mails land in your inbox and you pick up how revisions happen. Timing is the problem. Say you submit six months before your thesis. The revision may come just when you are preparing for your viva-voce. Two years later a reader asks for your data, and your university email id is already closed. For these reasons many supervisors take the role themselves. Many times it is simply the practical choice and has little to do with credit.

If you are taking it, give a permanent personal email address. Whoever becomes corresponding author, agree that each journal email is forwarded to all the authors. The deadlines people miss are mostly for revisions and proofs, and our guide to publishing a research paper warns about this.

How do equal contribution, acknowledgements and changes to authors after submission work?

Equal contribution

A few journals allow you to mark two or more authors as equal contributors, mostly with a symbol and a footnote. Nature Portfolio journals, for example, let one set of co-authors be marked as contributing equally and one set as having jointly supervised the work. Look at the journal’s guide for authors first. In some universities the committee sees only whose name is printed first, so ask research cell also.

People who helped but aren’t authors

Think of the technician who ran your samples or a friend who corrected your English. Thank each one by name in the acknowledgements and mention what they did. Take their permission before that (ICMJE suggests getting it in writing). Our thesis acknowledgement guide uses the same idea for the thesis itself.

Adding or removing authors after submission

Journals keep this difficult deliberately. ICMJE asks editors to collect an explanation and a signed agreement from all the listed authors, and also from the person being added or removed. At Elsevier, a change after submission is up to the editor, and every author must agree to it. Once the paper is accepted, no change is allowed at all. So finalise the author list before you click submit.

How do you prevent authorship disputes? Agree it in writing first

Most authorship fights begin because nobody discussed the order. Then after eighteen months, two scholars find that both of them assumed they would be second author. As per COPE’s guide for new researchers, you should start talking about authorship at the planning stage of the research itself. The same guide says the authors should be decided before each article is started.

Nobody signs any contract for this. Meet once, send one email after, and each future author replies “agreed” on that mail. Put these points in it.

• Every person who will be an author, and the actual work each one will do, such as analysis, writing, figures or critical revision.
• The author order, and what would change it. For example, a co-author’s part may grow into a full chapter of new work.
• Who the corresponding author is, and the email address they will use for the next five years.
• Whether anyone will be marked as equal contribution, and whether the target journal permits that.
• Who goes in the acknowledgements instead of the author list, and who will ask them for permission.
• ORCID iDs of all the authors, collected before submission.
• How disagreements will be settled. First a meeting with the supervisor, then the co-supervisor or DC/RAC, and after that the institution’s research integrity process.
• A closing line saying “All of us have read and agree to this plan”, with the reply of each person saved.

If a dispute happens anyway, the institution settles it and the journal editors stay out of it. ICMJE says the institution where the work was done should investigate, and COPE’s 2019 discussion document also expects the institution to help. In practice you go first to your supervisor, then to the DC or RAC, and then to your university’s research integrity committee. Save the drafts and emails that show who did which part.

Collect every author’s ORCID iD now only, not on the night before submission. Our ORCID and Scopus ID guide explains how to create one.

Worked example: a four-author paper and its CRediT statement

This is a sample case with made-up names. Meera is in the fourth year of her PhD in agricultural economics. She is turning one chapter, on crop-insurance uptake, into a journal paper. Four people worked on it, and they agreed this order over email.

1. 1

   Meera Pillai (PhD scholar): first author

   Designed the survey along with her supervisor, collected the responses from farmers, did the analysis and wrote the first draft.

2. 2

   Arjun Rao (fellow scholar): second author

   Cleaned the dataset, translated the Kannada questionnaire and did a critical revision of the draft.

3. 3

   Dr S. Fatima (statistics department): third author

   Gave advice on the sampling design, checked the regression models and rewrote the limitations section.

4. 4

   Prof. K. Raghavan (supervisor): last and corresponding author

   Conceived the study, got the grant and revised every draft. He is corresponding author because Meera will submit her thesis in eight months.

Not on the list are the field assistant who distributed questionnaires in one taluk (acknowledged), the HOD (did not contribute) and the funding agency (named in the funding statement).

Here is their CRediT statement, in the format Elsevier journals print just above the acknowledgements.

Meera Pillai: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft. Arjun Rao: Data curation, Validation, Writing – review & editing. S. Fatima: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing. K. Raghavan: Conceptualization, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing.

Prof. Raghavan is an author because he conceived the study and revised the text, which are ICMJE criteria 1 and 2. Supervision and Funding acquisition by themselves would not have made him one. If arranging the money was his only part, his place would be in the acknowledgements. Review papers and short communications follow the same rules (see types of research articles). For writing the rest of the paper, go to how to write a research paper.